Stars and Rabbit announce new album with soothing single ‘Merry Alone’

Indonesian indie pop duo Stars and Rabbit have released ‘Merry Alone’, the first single from their upcoming album ‘On Different Days’.

The single arrives with an accompanying music video, directed by Merry Wijaya of Aaska Productions. The animated short sees a star-shaped protagonist – endearingly named Starboi, per a press release – encountering a mysterious spherical entity. It’s a vivid pastel-hued voyage that carries with it a tale learned from the ongoing pandemic.

Watch the video below.

Explaining the deeper meaning of the video via a press statement, Wijaya adds that “we didn’t know much about the virus, and even were in denial about it. But with more understanding and knowledge achieved through many perspectives, hopefully we can survive and live in the new post-pandemic world.”

The song itself, according to Stars and Rabbit’s vocalist Elda Suryani, was drawn from the experience of isolating in tandem with the rest of the world last year.

“At this point in time, have you ever felt irrelevant to the world around you? Disconnected. It left you a little lonely,” she mused in a press statement. The band later sums up in the document that “when our world is reduced to little more than our bedroom, we have to create worlds of our own.”

The guitar-driven sonics of ‘Merry Alone’ were “built to soothe”, adds bandmate Didit Saad. “There is a little American desert atmosphere to symbolise barren life.”

Set for release on June 25, ‘On Different Days’ is Stars and Rabbit’s follow-up from 2020’s ‘Rainbow Aisle’. The album will be released by Green Island Music in conjunction with Japan’s Big Romantic Records, and UK’s Trapped Animal Records.

‘Merry Alone’ is Stars and Rabbit’s first original release of 2021. Earlier this year, they released a version of ‘Attic No. 7’ from ‘Rainbow Aisle’ as performed live in Jakarta.

The tracklist of Stars And Rabbit’s ‘On Different Days’ is:

1. ‘Merry Alone’
2. ‘Moon Lone City’
3. ‘Who Am I Now?’
4. ‘Misty Garden’
5. ‘One Foot’
6. ‘Library Of My Mind’
7. ‘Pretty Anticipated’
8. ‘Time Traveller’